How did we ensure the rise of Donald Trump? Conservatives mocked Obama’s pledge to change even as we worked to assist with that failure. Conservatives were silent when marginal figures attacked Obama’s legitimacy. Depicting current happenings as normalcy requires a determined suspension of critical faculties. This amounts to the conservative mind being diseased and abandons the normal constraints of reason and compassion. The bitter pill to cure the diseased mind of the conservative is to acknowledge the accumulation of damage raining down from the president and act before the deluge rather than ignoring the obvious, forming a disaster.

Responding with silence to the erratic presidency abdicates responsibility. Congress must be unified in defense of its prerogatives regardless of presidential affiliation. When principles become malleable to the heat of power, they soon deform into something of no consequence and are no longer principles. When a foreign power’s attack on our democracy results in a rejection by the presidency of his own intelligence, there is something rotten in the state of Denmark.

Despotic men are deposed but their ambition resurrects in others who have learned from the departed. Here now, our forebears cry out from their graves, warning us of the foreign transgressors now at the gates of our Republic. Republicans win bigly when they shortsightedly play to populism and prefer protectionist policy, while handicapping the country without a long view, long term. The ruling party engages in reckless politics and reenacts history to the detriment of the people that they are here to serve.

A Quinnipiac University poll asked participants for a word that came to mind when they thought of Donald Trump: The No. 1 response was “idiot”.

To access this New York Times article hold ctrl key and click on icon.

Analysis

Idiot in modern understanding describes a person who lacks intelligence but it’s original meaning is more appropriate when applying a word to Trump.

An idiot in ancient Greece depended on the public for his existence, contributing nothing to it, concerned only with self.

Being uninvolved with the community but taking benefits from it, the idiot contributed to both his own demise and also the slow deterioration of society.

The idiot does not communicate with the community, he talks only for and to himself.

The idiot in ancient Greece existed as prepubescent (not transitioned to public life), parasitic, and self-idiomatic (a language only understood by him).

Idiot today means low intelligence thanks to the usurping of the term by early IQ test “Ableists” (characterizes persons as defined by their disabilities and as inferior to the non-disabled).

As a consequence of this IQ classification, idiots aren’t able to vote in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico and Ohio.

Keeping idiots off the voters roles was meant to accomplish both self and social preservation.

The more power the non-community participating idiot is given the more danger he is to the public.

The choice of the word idiot as an attribution of our president, its current meaning inaccurate, seems to be historically accurate. Just as four states still prevent what are defined as modern day idiots from voting, our country should prevent ancient day idiots from running for public office. The deterioration of community might not survive the administration of our current idiot.

At first blush, this question brings to mind my oft quoted line from King Lear: The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman. If the question were rephrased to Who would you say is more like a gentleman? The query becomes more palatable but far from digestible. This blog raises the question of personal motive over devil’s intent by the “gentleman” McConnell.

Robin Bates paints parallels here. With Democrats as God and healthcare as Adam, he seems to state that Adam/healthcare can’t be saved because of some implausible Justice. McConnell’s determined revenge against Obama sacrifices innocents and achieves payback. In the scale of Justice there is balance but it can hardly be discerned when weighing revenge against the body/bodies pile(d) in the green of Eden or the morgue of St. Somewhere.

Our current unbounded government is likened to the Hell of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Though Satan has nothing personal against Adam, he rationalizes the carnage as just business. And so, it is with McConnell. Cloaking his malice in “public reason” and “honor”, Mitch characterizes his stealthy proceedings on the GOP Senate AHCA as “promise keeping” and ignores the collateral damage (the suffering of innocents) that the promise promises (i.e. repealing Obamacare). How can one recognize Satan? Look to the savvy gentleman to your right.

President-elect Donald Trump dismissed the story as if it were a piece of fake news.

“The election ended in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history.

The President-elect’s attempt to undermine the American people’s access to [a foreign government’s interference in our election] undermines the very foundation upon which this country was built

Trump won the Presidency by gas light.

His rise to power has awakened a force of bigotry by condoning and encouraging hatred, but also by normalizing deception.

Civil rights are now on trial.

We must regain control of the truth.

Listen to “Duel of the Fates.

“Gas lighting” is someone causing another to question reality.

Doubting whether one’s perspective can be trusted, cling to a single shred of evidence, hold one’s conviction, and free oneself from captor’s control.

To gas light is to psychologically manipulate a person to the point where they question their own sanity.

He swore off the lies of politicians but contradicted himself, without bothering to conceal his conflicts.

He lied to us over and over again, and spun them into evidence of bias.

At the hands of Trump, facts have become interchangeable with opinions, blinding us into arguing amongst ourselves, as our very reality is called into question.

Long list of Trump’s lies:

Trump saying that he watched thousands of people cheering on 9/11 in Jersey City

Mexican government forces immigrants into the U.S.

“30 or 34 million” immigrants in this country

he never supported the Iraq War

that the unemployment rate is as high as “42 percent”

the U.S. is the highest taxed country in the world

that crime is on the rise

The gas lighting part comes in when the fictions are disputed by the media, and Trump:

doubles down on his lies

paints himself as a victim of unfair coverage

threatens to revoke access.

Trump has repeatedly attempted to undermine the press:

The well-respected publications as the New York Times.

He has disseminated a wealth of unsubstantiated attacks on the media

Baseless tweets

Trump’s gas lighting was manipulative, a deliberate attempt to destabilize journalism as a check government.

Everyone living under Trump:

Radical progressives

Hardline Republicans

Jill Stein’s weird cousin.

The President of the United States cannot be lying to the American electorate with zero accountability.

The threat of deception is not a partisan issue.

Trump took advantage of the things that divide this country…while lying his way to the Oval Office.

The good news about this boiling frog scenario is that we’re not boiling yet.

Trump is not going to stop playing with the burner…

Stop pretending it’s always been so hot in here.

Empower ourselves:

Insist on fact-checking every Trump statement you read

If you find factual inaccuracies in an article, send an email to the editor

Explain how things should have been clearer.

Inform yourself what outlets are trustworthy and which aren’t.

Seek out a browser extension that flags misleading sites or print out a list of fake outlets

Do a thorough search before believing the agenda Trump distributes on Twitter.

Refuse to accept information simply because it is fed to you

If facts become a point of debate, the very definition of freedom will be called into question.

It will be far easier to take on Trump’s words when there is no question of what he’s said

We all must insist on that level of transparency.

Ugliness to untangle:

Whether our President can be an admitted sexual predator

Figure out how to stop him from threatening the sovereignty of an entire religion.

It’s incredible that any of those things could seem like a distraction from a greater peril, or be only the cherry-picked issues in a seemingly unending list of gaffes, but the gaslights are flickering.

As a candidate, Trump’s gas lighting was manipulative, as President-elect it is a deliberate attempt to destabilize journalism as a check on the power of government. Many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump. For they were thieves not only of wages but of honor. To their purpose they could quote not only Scripture but Jefferson. Where are these references coming from? What do they mean? Who said them? My head is swimming from the rhetoric that is pouring forth. I love to search out literary quotes. Historical references make my day. Magnificent or horrid metaphors light my fire. What meaning is hidden from me in today’s quizzical quotes and histrionic headlines?

When the Egyptian farmers completed harvesting their corn, they used to cry and pretend to be a grief-stricken. This was done to mislead the spirits of which they believed lived in the corn. The farmers had the fear that the spirits might become angry when they cut down the corn on which the spirits used to live.

Hops Festival:
The month of February and March is the time for the harvesting of Hops. Hops are dried in kilns, bleached with sulphur dioxide and pressed into bales. About 90% of Australia’s hops are used for making beer.

Nubaigai is the harvest festival held in Lithuania. In Lithuania, the Thanksgiving tradition involves the creation of a Boba which is then wrapped around the worker who bound the last sheaf.

The harvest wreath is then carried in a plate covered with a white linen cloth. As the procession moves on, people who reaped sing an old song which represents how they rescued the crop from a huge bison that tried to devour it.

1963 – U.S. President Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, TX. Texas Governor John B. Connally was also seriously wounded. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was inaugurated as the 36th U.S. President.

The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language. He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.

If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share. W. Clement Stone

5 Ways to Talk to Your Pro-Trump Family on Thanksgiving

1) Arm yourself with facts, but convey emotion with personal stories.

2) Ask open-ended questions and listen to their responses.

3) If they’re misinformed, question their sources.

4) Channel your inner Hillary.

5) Don’t argue to win.

What is your favorite comment or quote about the election, results or candidates?

She’s a professional matchmaker.

“I had one man that refused to continue to date a lady that voted for Trump. I have heard of countless conflicts with dates because of the election. It’s been so bad I’ve decided not to set up any more dates till next week,” Rose said Thursday.

What a shame. Donald Trump will be remembered as the man who decimated the Republican Party and gave us crooked Hillary as our next president.